Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) – A. Stapleton

Fun doco that surely benefits from a better-than-usual assortment of talking heads and, of course, the crazy clips drawn from the films of exploitation maestro Roger Corman. Corman (who is still producing films in 2021 at age 95) also served as mentor to a generation of filmmakers who made their early works with him before graduating to become the leading lights of the New Hollywood of the 1970s: directors Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Demme, Coppola, Dante, and Bartel, alongside actors Nicholson, De Niro, P. Fonda, B. Dern, Hopper, and D. Carradine, most of whom make an appearance here.  Corman’s role in producing films that have provided (and still provide?) a training ground for Hollywood stalwarts should not be underestimated. Although I haven’t seen a lot of his output (IMDb lists 56 directorial credits and a whopping 515 for producer), I can heartily recommend his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations (especially House of Usher, 1960; The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961; The Haunted Palace, 1963; The Mask of the Red Death, 1964; and The Tomb of Ligeia, 1964), most of which starred Vincent Price.  What I did not know about Corman is that he and his brother produced and directed a film about integration in the South (The Intruder, 1962, starring William Shatner) that was something of a moral crusade for them (and met with opposition from locals); because his usual producers American International Pictures wouldn’t back the film, he also became an early champion of independent film. He also had his head on straight:  when asked what he thought about film budgets in the age of the blockbuster/franchise, he suggested they were obscene and the money could be better spent dealing with poverty and other social ills. So, here’s to the cheap but fun (drive-in) movies he gave to us!